in which i employ a plant May 11, 2012
Posted by Ashli in Lesson Disclosure, Teaching Thoughts.1 comment so far
One of the fun parts about participating in the online community is meeting members of the online community in person. I had a chance to meet Daniel Schneider, aka Mathy McMatherson, and break some bread while enjoying one of my favorite things: edu-math-chat. And if you are not reading his stuff, you should be. I will be utilizing his Wall of Remediation idea for my Support class kiddos to study for the final in Algebra 1 which covers distinct skills from our SBG setup.
During our chat I was reminded of something I used to do that for some reason I have not been doing the past few years. I thought I would write it out here to help me remember to use it again in the future. I think best when I get a chance to write things down, so this may be a bit free-flowing.
So picture this: you have a lesson planned that will hopefully lead kids through some mathy ideas to a big conclusion. You are concerned, however, that they will not ask the questions you are hoping for and are unsure of your abilities to steer the conversation without obviously grabbing the wheel. This was my state of being for several years (and still is sometimes). On the spur of the moment in class during my 2nd year of teaching I decided to ask I kid I trusted to keep a straight face to ask a specific question if I gave a signal. It wasn’t critical to the question, but it was a nuance I didn’t think the kids were picking up on. I ended up giving the student the signal and they asked the question. This caused a pause in the class and then more back and forth conversations in the group about this point. My plant jumped into the discussion and none of the students thought anything out of the ordinary had happened.
Was I covering for weak group-discussion-leading skills? Maybe. Did the kids see something they wouldn’t have seen otherwise had the question not been asked? Yup. Was it better coming from a student than it was from me? I think so. I believe that students often respond better to the questions/responses of their peers than they do to myself. Peanuts effect and whatnot.
Fast forward a bit. I ended up using plants on occasion. Sometimes for questions, sometimes to say wrong answers I wanted to make sure got covered. I totally got caught in some classes, which I was able to play up enough that the kids found it amusing and the plant was giving off smug ‘chosen one’ vibes. I realized that getting caught could be great. I chose to sometimes give a kid a written question/comment with vocabulary they would never use, but I totally would. Authentic learning environment? Nope. Did kids pay attention, get a laugh, and build not only mathematical understanding but also classroom community? yup.
I once used it freak out students. Used to be my 1st period support kids would see me twice: once for support and once for regular algebra 1. I had a kid ask in support about other math symbols (we were doing inequalities if I remember right). This was a student who expressed dislike of math, but was well-liked by his peers and rather good at math he ‘got’. I wrote out some abstract form of “for all x contained within the reals ….” in symbolic notation. he thought the ‘code’ was pretty cool, so I asked if he could remember what it meant. He repeated it back. Fast-forward to period 2. Regular algebra 1. Same symbols question comes up. I get my plant a quick glance and he is playing it cool. I write up the symbols again, tell the class it’s an advanced math sentence and ask if any of them know what it says. They are, of course, stuck on the upside-down A. My plant raises his hand and TOTALLY plays this up. Squints his eyes a bit, rubs his chin, “well, I think it says …” Beautiful performance. I wanted to applaud. Every other kid in the class is staring at him, his friends are whispering demands for how he knew that. I congratulated him and repeated what he said while pointing at the sentence and then continued with the lesson.
I’m pretty sure he admitted to them later about being a plant, but it definitely got the attention of the class and I started seeing the upside-down A and the triple dots for ‘therefore’ on some papers.
Some notes on the details. I never used the same kid twice. I never made it a regular thing lest they get paranoid about one another. I’ve not done it in years. I think in the National Board year-of-crazy it got lost and I hadn’t even thought about it (which tells you how infrequently I did use it).
I’m much better at helping to direct conversations and making sure that kids are set up properly to make the connections I want these days. That does not, however, mean I am not thinking about how to use the ‘plant’ idea in some of my upcoming lessons.
in which i listen to conversations not my own March 20, 2012
Posted by Ashli in General, Teaching Thoughts.3 comments
There is always chatter about teaching as a profession and how, in the view of some, teaching isn’t treated like one. “You get the whole summer off!” yells one side. “We work 50+ hours per week the rest of the year!” says the other side. Some worry about Khan Academy taking over teaching while others beg for online classes to get here faster.
I don’t want to discuss that right now. Mostly because it’s lunch and I don’t have the next 20 hours free. Instead, I want to talk about how I hear other teachers talking about teaching by using a real life example.
Recently I was at a committee meeting looking over textbooks my district might be adopting and found myself listening to the conversation a table over a small group was having as they looked through the books. I’m paraphrasing a bit, but the point one of them was making was that they wanted a clear textbook with a listed objective, multiple examples, and practice problems for the kids so that “anyone could come in and teach the lesson.”
…
#headdesk #soapboxup (more…)
In which my folded plans are turned into bad kirigami November 9, 2011
Posted by Ashli in General, Planning, Teaching Thoughts.7 comments
What do you do when a kid cheats? Or worse, steals?
I am away at a conference right now (it’s super cool, but that post will have to wait for the week to be complete), and I made sub plans for 4 days. I had a folder for each class for each day. Seating charts. Annotated keys. I left cocoa for my sub as a thank you.
Tomorrow the kids are taking a midterm. I know it’s more than awkward to have them take a midterm when I’m not around, but they know exactly what the problems are and have spent the past two months working with them. Each day was planned out with review problems like ones they had seen before to practice and a full key to check their work with at the end.
But that’s not the distressing part of this tale.
(more…)
Storytelling March 13, 2011
Posted by Ashli in Teaching Thoughts.2 comments
I feel like this short video series could be very useful in teaching, but I need another week to digest it fully. Some quotes that I like with following thoughts:
“…when you have one thing leading to the next leading to the next you can feel inherently that you are on a train that has a destination and that [your] gonna find something.”
“The other thing that that little anecdote has is that it’s raising a question from the beginning. And that is the other thing that you want: you want bait. You want to constantly be raising questions.”
“Everything will be more compelling if you just talk like a human being. If you just talk like yourself.”
Ira Glass has quantified ’storytelling’ into two main things: the Anecdote and the Reflection. In thinking about how storytelling is done in a math class, I want to say that it’s my job to get the story going. It’s my job to show a picture or a video or bring up things in the news and get the Anecdote rolling, but I want my students to do the Reflection piece. I want to hear their conclusions about facts they have been presented with. I want to help them reach toward beautiful mathematics which we can then put on paper and solve and then sit back and be all ‘wow, that’s neat’ together.
How often do we see teaching where one or both of these components is missing? I know that I’m guilty of teaching students to work through a variety of mathematics and then missing out on that Reflection piece. Or trying to get students to be Reflective when I’ve not presented enough of an Anecdote for them to be even a little curious. How does this stuff connect? Where is it used? Why do I care?
I think my favorite part in the 4-part video is from #3. Glass is talking about video makers, but I feel it rings to true to teaching. The following is transcript from the video that I’ve edited slightly:
“Nobody tells people who are beginners,and I really wish somebody had told this to me, is that if you’re [teaching] you’re somebody who wants to [inspire], right? And all of us who do creative work like, you know, we get into it and we get into it because we have [a passion for it]. Do you know what I mean?
Like you want to [teach] because you love [education and learning and the kids]. You know what I mean? Because there’s stuff that you just like love, OK? So you’ve got really [strong passion] and you get into this thing that I don’t even know how to describe but it’s like there’s a gap. That for the first couple years that you’re [creating lessons], what you’re making isn’t so good, OK? It’s not that great. It’s really not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not quite that good.
But your [passion], the thing that got you into the game, your [passion] is still killer and your [passion] is good enough that you can tell that [the lessons] you’re [teaching] are kind of a disappointment to you, you know what I mean? Like you can tell that [they're] still sort of crappy. A lot of people never get past that phase and a lot of people at that point quit.
And the thing I would just like say to you with all my heart is that most everybody I know who does interesting creative work, they went through a phase of years where they had really [amazing passion] and they could tell what they were making wasn’t as good as they wanted it to be. They knew it fell short, you know, and some of us can admit that to ourselves and some of us are a little less able to admit that to ourselves.
But we knew that it didn’t have the special thing that we wanted it to have and the thing what to do is… Everybody goes through that. And for you to go through it, if you’re going through it right now, if you’re just getting out of that phase or if you’re just starting off and you’re entering into that phase, you’ve got to know it’s totally normal and the most important possible thing you can do is do a lot of work.
Do a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week or every month you know you’re going to finish one [amazing lesson or unit]. You know what I mean? Whatever it’s going to be. You create the deadline. It’s best if you have somebody who’s waiting for work from you, somebody who’s expecting work from you, even if it’s not somebody who pays you but that you’re in a situation where you have to try not to work. Because it’s only be actually going through a volume of work that you are actually going to catch up and close that gap. And the work you’re making will be as good as your ambitions.”
I’m currently working on making something amazing for Rational Functions to try to inspire a room full of anti-math, bored seniors and help them see that they have mathematical ability, but it does take work and they can’t slack off. Right now I’m trying to use some technology to get them to see the problems through a different medium. I also decided to start with adding/subtracting instead of multiplying/dividing because I didn’t want them thinking it was some factor-and-slash cakewalk. We’ll see how it goes.
Current Algebra 1 Skill List October 16, 2010
Posted by Ashli in SBG, Teaching Thoughts.1 comment so far
A request went out for the skill list my school uses for algebra 1. The document has been explanded from my original 2008 work (for the better) as we pair down skills with higher efficiency.
You can see it here.
I am currently reworking the skill list to be more teacher/student friendly. I am using the program Inspiration and ideas from the layout of the Civilization 5 tech-tree along with ideas about learning targets (RE: kid-friendly language). My dream is a neat looking poster sectioned out by chapter that I could put up on the wall of my room to help everyone see the connections. Possibly even little check boxes for the students to fill out as they achieve skill mastery.
In other news, the school year is going well. I’ve not figured out how to take time to write posts and I have several in draft form that need to get posted. I feel neglectful to twitter and keeping up with other blogs and I think I need to pick a day of the week to dedicate to keeping up with professional blogs and cool things other people are doing. If anyone out there has a good method for keeping up with the rest of the blogulty, let me know 
Response to Intervention Seminar, Part 1 August 6, 2010
Posted by Ashli in Prof. Development, RTI, Teaching Thoughts.3 comments
Today and tomorrow I’m doing the Seattle ‘Pyramid Response to Intervention’. It’s hosted by Austin Buffum, Mike Mattos, Chris Weber, and Janet Malone and is based off of the book. I’ll note that I’ve not read the book yet. I plan on doing a longer post on some of my thoughts from the seminar when it’s done, but I wanted to get a few things down about today while they are fresh.
There are a lot of soundbites and buzzwords being bandied about, but they made a great point that though many teachers say ‘all children can learn’, they usually put a ‘but’ or ‘except’ after that sentence. All means all, peoples. Mattos made an great point that the only thing you can put after that sentences is “who will be expected to live independently one day”. There are some kids who will never be able to live independently and for whom telling hot/cold water is the main goal for the immediate future. They will lean, but it’s going to be modified. Other than that population, they can all learn. may be an uphill slog of a downhill sled, but they can do it. The prior group will just have better calf muscles when they’re through.
New favorite word: Co-blab-eration. Because, really, isn’t that what so much collaborative work turns into? kibitzing about students, musing on public opinion, pining for the good ol’ days. Blarg. I want to work. I want to plan this curriculum and find consensus on what we as a department feels is important. I want to hear from the new teachers and the veterans on the topic at hand, not the latest admin decision that has your panties in a twist.
Favorite quote: “Choose first steps to engineer early victories”. YES. I want this tattooed on the back of my eyelids (metaphorically–I have a tattoo planned, but it’s not going on my eyelids and is far more geeky). This is my biggest goal at the start of every year because it creates so much student buy-in and builds their self-efficacy. It’s sets a positive tone and does more for classroom management than just about anything else.
It’s also something I think the PLC work at my school needs to turn to. We started PLC’s last year, and there is plenty of issues being voiced from not enough time to too much time (hah!) to too much district mandated focuses. We did some great work in terms to picking out the most important learning targets/skills from each of the state standards for Algebra 1, Geometry, and Algebra 2, but it needs to keep going! All we did was identify–now we need to peel apart what goes into them (pre-reqs) and how do we teach them? When? What depth? What do we do when the kids don’t get it? Who taught it crazy-well and can share there secrets? How will we be able to judge that last one?
I love the time spent working with the Alg 1 group that I was a part of and the Precalc group (though that one spans schools). When we really focused on data and instruction the conversations were wonderful, but we also got off-task a lot. I’m as much to blame for it as anyone else–exhaustion at the end of the day does not a productive worker make. But I also believe that true PLC collaborative work will lessen the work elsewhere if we can pin down our strengths and share more. The conversations need to be about the teaching and not the teachers, though, if it’s going to work. I am not sure my department has had the training to make that happen.
The seminar is overall interesting if only for the time to talk with others from my school about PLC work and where we are going this year with it all. It pales to PCMI in terms of PD, but hey, what doesn’t? Definitely Admin-y, but in a room with 500 others at the Westin, how could it not? As our PLC focus for the past year was on ‘what’ students should be learning and able to do, I look forward to working on the ‘how’ we know they know it but I think much of the year will still be focused on the first question as there is a lot to unpack in terms of prerequisites and where topics are seen again that I don’t think has been done yet. On the bright side, all the SBG work I did for Alg 1 cam in handy when it came time to focus on the ‘core’ standards in the state curriculum (Ooo, that one has 6 skills associated with it–it might be important!).
Lastly, I’m thinking of taking a stack of index cards, the college readiness standards (read: as close to precalc standards as I have), my school’s precalc book, and a few other precalc books I <3 and making a giant tech-tree, a la Civilization, on my wall at school before the year starts to help me think about organization and skills needed and where things repeat. I’ll post pix if I get anywhere with that.
Anyhoo, will post more next week. Going to the ocean this weekend. After being gone 5 weeks, clearly I’ve been home too long. May make a sandcastle based on Mandelbrot.
So this origami model has how many steps? July 14, 2010
Posted by Ashli in General, Reflection, Teaching Thoughts.3 comments
Year 4 of teacher may have whitewashed my metaphorical fence and replaced several damaged boards, I can still see some of the graffiti and burn marks from year three.
I live on Kilian Betlach’s Ledge to this day, but year three was the one that I had purchased a glider and leaned back before the leap when I put a note in my day calendar three months into the future that read “If you still feel this way, you need to find a new job.” Year 1 was manic and amazing. Year two sobered me up and I focused a bit too much on what I wasn’t doing, but it was a good battle. Year 3 was the one everyone said gets easier and I spent it feeling like I had been run over by Optimus Prime (childhood crush, so rather devastating, really).
I spent Year 3 feeling like I was tilting at windmills. No matter what I tried I couldn’t get [enough of] the students to care and grading seemed like a farce and what the hell was up with the textbooks? While I’m sure that my bizarre belief that everything would magically get better that year contributed to the feeling of purgatory, I believe that the true cause of my despair came from finally knowing enough to see the flaws in systems I had blindly adopted from my more experienced peers and my years of experience as a high school student. It’s like someone gave me paper and a few directions with three pictures and told me to create a 200-step origami crane.
So what made me return the glider and take a two steps back? The same things that kept me a math major in college: turning off the “I suck” mental track and reading way too many things on the internet. I can’t even say where it started, but I think my early Google searches were “Teaching Algebra 1″ and “Algebra 1 failure rate” which lead to some articles and district websites from the Midwest about how they were addressing the high failure rate. Then I started finding blogs of math educators. In this reading I noticed a lot of them mentioning some guy names Dan Meyer, so I figured I would check him out.
Big mistake on a Sunday night. Huge. I don’t even know when I went to sleep, but the morning started and I practically assaulted my principal at 6am (he gets in early like that) and begged him to read a few posts and please please please let me figure out how to implement that type of grading system in algebra 1 and I’ll align it to the state standards and I just have to do this since it’s the only thing that’s made sense to me all year.
That was December of 2008. My principal–being the intelligent, rational person he is–gave a green-light to test it out in some algebra 1 restart classes we had decided to implement in second semester (read:the first semester of algebra 1 for students who got less than a 50% in the second semester). Over winter break I ripped apart the state standards (think Civilization tech tree with individual skills grouped by the standard they go with) and aligned them with my district’s Alagebra 1 textbooks. I got a colleague on board with me and we dove in that second semester.
There was definite fumbling in the beginning and some “oh, wow, never do that again” moments, but the conversations in those classes changed from “I failed the chapter 3 test!” to “I can’t solve multi-step equations!” I recognize that that seems so small, but it was as though someone gave me another 20 folding directions for the crane–it was hope that I could do this teaching thing and effect positive change.
Year 4 brought about a big class-shift for me: four Algebra 1 classes became one Algebra 1 Support class and the rest was fleshed out with Precalculus and two classes of the PreCalc-alternative. A part of me cried for joy after seeing that line (trig and I have deep love) and the other part wondered what would happen to all the work that had been done that year. Luckily, my colleague and I got the other Algebra 1 teachers to agree to adopt the standards-based-grading we had developed based on Meyer’s system and he also took up the Algebra 1 Czar mantle and helped keep the classes rolling.
As I was more or less out of the main Algebra 1 world (and classes that have official state standards), I turned my attention this past year towards using the grading method in the upper-level classes. I chose in the end to keep the regular tests and use the skill-assessments as my quizzes. I kept a chart on the wall showing the class averages in the skills. I had lines during certain times of the year 15 students deep next to my desk waiting patiently for some help on a quiz skill or to get one to retake because they had already hauled someone out of line earlier and requested peer-tutoring. I was so happy on those days it came out a bit like maniacal laughter, but by then the students were used to my special brand of crazy so they more or less ignored it.
The world is by no means sunshine and unicorn tails (I do live in Washington), but having affected change in my classroom and at my school in this one way I feel capable of making other changes. I also know enough about myself as a teacher to know that I need to pick one big thing for Year 5 to focus on (eliciting student thoughts is in the lead atm) and to be patient about the changed. Patient only learning a few more folds on my crane every year.
So that’s where I’m at now. Mentally, at least. Physically I’m at PCMI in Utah, but this Institute deserves several of it’s own posts and will get them after I finish and post my grading manifesto (lest Sam Shah become vexed).
Lastly, this post is dedicated to Dan Meyer. I am not sure I would have made it out of Year 3 without his blog and the inspiration it gave me to get off the ground and jump back into the good fight. My work is once again, as put by Noel Coward, “more fun than fun.” I couldn’t ask for anything more.
